What wharf has neither metal anchor nor heavy coils of rope?
Farther down the Thames is a bridge once favoured
by prostitutes for its low guardrail, the ease of descent,
though other, unmentioned girls came to prop a heel
on its cold steel and so divulge a shapely calf.
Which is to say that a search of the dock would find the usual
instruments of restraint, but of such strange material
that though their forms would foster recognition, you’d yearn
to touch them, to weigh in a palm the anchor that could not
pin a bird, the rope as light as a mouthful of fruit.
Hard science might explain the boat’s fidelity by reckoning the waves’
relative stillness, the craft’s weight, the distance of the moon.
And as for “soft” science, the -ologies of more- elusive chemistries,
leave them to speak amongst themselves with a shrug
of your pale shoulders, with the memory of one deepening kiss